


Out of Practice

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 15:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In theory, a response to tf-rare-pairing Drift/Ratchet 'checking in'.  In reality, just some fluffy schmoop because that's apparently what my brain needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Practice

Another late night in the medibay, and Ratchet would complain a) if he had someone to complain to, b) if he was the complaining type, and c) he had anything better to do. But Rewind’s latest movie night was about music theory and Swerve had dedicated the bar to a Luau theme night, and if those are your entertainment options, yeah, suddenly a nice long evening reviewing medical records seems not so bad.  It was, if nothing else, comfortingly familiar a routine, something he’d done before the war, during the war, after the war, like steady even stitches that sewed together his life.  

It had been a slow decacycle for the Lost Light.  Which wasn’t ‘slow’  as much as ‘on the low end of trauma’, so there was a thick pile of files of crushed thumbs, welding accidents (though he rather doubted Atomizer was that clumsy: it had Brainstorm’s fingerprints all over it), strained servomotors, etc etc. 

It was almost relaxing, in a way, to log them, code them in spreadsheets, like a meditation of sorts, automatically tallying parts he needed to refabricate, things he needed to pull from stores. He was lulled into a steady rhythm when he heard the chime at the medibay door.

“Better be a slaggin’ emergency,” he muttered, without looking up.  “And I mean like ‘I’m missing my head’ emergency. Or else you’re gonna be missing your head.” What? He didn’t like being interrupted.

“What if it’s the ‘didn’t see you at chow time’ emergency?” Drift’s voice, his silhouette in the doorway. 

Ratchet sighed, pushing the datapad away. “That’s not an emergency.”

“Third in command duty,” Drift parried. “Making sure key personnel are—“

“Don’t even try to give me that scrap.”

“Even medics need to eat.”  Drift stepped into the light, holding a warmed energon ration, blue optics unsure. 

“I have a dispenser here,” Ratchet said, gesturing vaguely toward the front room.

“And you’ve used it?”

Ratchet frowned.  “Listen, Drift. I don’t need you looking after me. I’m the medic, here.”

“I know.”  Drift put the ration down on Ratchet’s desk, a little uncertain. “I just was, you know, trying to be nice.”

Of course. It was Drift, so trying was his middle name. In both versions of ‘trying’. “Yeah, well, it’s a thoughtful gesture, Drift,” Ratchet said, grudgingly, looking down at his datapad in that way that said the conversation—such as it was—was over.  “Thank you.”

Drift shifted from side to side, uncertain, like he was stalling leaving. 

Ratchet sighed, laying the pad aside again. “Is there something you wanted, Drift?” he said, impatiently.

“I. Uh. No. I mean. Just. You need anything?”

Typical Drift, as though sentences confused him. “No. I’m good.” He looked up. “Drift, no one dies from missing a meal.”

“I know.” And there was a sudden roughness in his voice, that panged at Ratchet’s conscience. If anyone would know that, it would be Drift, who spent years in the gutters. 

“Look,” Ratchet said. “I told you. I don’t need someone taking care of me.”

“…I know,” Drift said, softly. “I just. I kind of do.”

It was only long acquaintance with Drift that let Ratchet untangle that sentence.  “This is about Perceptor, isn’t it?”

A shake of the head, a little too earnest and quick.  “ _He_ doesn’t need me.” A bitter sorrow in his voice. 

“Drift.” Frag. He was a medic.  He could fix things that were broken, but not wounded sparks. 

“Yeah, I know,” Drift said. He reached for the ration. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have wasted your time.”

Ratchet’s hand came out, covering the ration’s lid. “You didn’t waste my time,” he said, flatly.  Drift was clumsy, but harmless. And Perceptor had gone suddenly aloof and distant on him, shedding his sniper’s coolness, the only Perceptor Drift had ever known, and shedding Drift as well.  He jerked his head to one side. “Have a seat.” 

Drift looked startled, like he didn’t quite believe this was happening, before edging around onto the seat, drawing the Great Sword and leaning it against the desk, hands awkward on his thighs, as though waiting a court martial or a dressing down. 

“So,” Drift said, finally. 

“So,” Ratchet repeated, and raised the warmed energon to his lips, taking a slow sip.  It was good, he had to admit: he could feel it rush through his lines, warm and tingling and good.  “Why me?”

“Huh?”  Drift blinked.

“I get it.  The whole Perceptor thing.  But why me?”

Drift’s fingered tapped the table, nervously.  “I. I mean, it’s just that, you know.”  He sighed, frustrated at himself. “He doesn’t need me. N-not that you do, or anything.” He shrugged, the red scallops of his spaulder cutting the air. “I guess it’s just, you know, you’ve always been there. Like you haven’t changed.” A faint edge of a smile on his mouth.

“Everyone’s changed,” Ratchet said, but it was automatic.  Because he really hadn’t. Not that much. He could feel an almost straight line from the mech he’d been back then, running free clinics in his off time in undercity gutters to now: the same drive to fix things, the same late nights, the same niggling that he wasn’t—somehow—doing enough.  He had been a constant, and he realized that he felt a certain pride about it, being stable and calm and sure—things a medic prizes—but also a bit of loneliness, that he was the one left behind, a relic, beloved but outworn.

He put the energon down, rising to his feet, gesturing with his hands. “Up.” Even that was his medic’s voice, one he couldn’t let go of, a mask he wasn’t sure he could put down.

“Wh-why?” Drift asked, half-rising. 

“Because I’m not going to kiss you sitting down,” he said. Ratchet felt his face form its usual professional scowl, before something new pushed through, something that looked new and a little uncertain.

“Oh.” It came out as more like a squeak, surprised, but eager, and that was just like Drift’s mouthplates as Ratchet bent over him, palms spreading over the swordsmech’s red spaulders, pulling him closer. Ratchet was out of practice with this, but it came back, like all old skills learned with earnest desire, and their lipplates grazed over each other, warm and silky, as both of them wrapped themselves in this new thing, shedding the past to become…whatever would come to them.  It was a little dizzying, to be so open to the future, to not have tomorrow and tomorrow stretch in front of Ratchet like a steady plod of duty that traced, like tracks in snow, into a past so old it couldn’t even clearly be seen anymore, but to have possibilities, things that shattered his dull routine, broke through all of that to touch the warmth of his spark. 

“You’re good at this,” Drift breathed, the words vibrating against Ratchet’s lipplates.

“I’m good at everything,” Ratchet said, but his tone was wry, mouth curling up at one end in a smile, and Drift caught the tone, and what it meant, his own optics twinkling, a grin mirroring Ratchet's. 

"Don't mind if I test that, do you?" 


End file.
